By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Twitter @bfry1981, YouTube, Facebook)  November 3, 2020 NOTE: This map and article accidentally earlier included South Dakota in Biden’s column

SILVER SPRING—This article will be uncharacteristically short, so let’s get to it.

If )we just go by the polls, former-Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris would be winning with an overwhelming Electoral College landslide: according to the essential Five Thirty Eight weighted polling averages, Biden is ahead by small (though not razor-thin) margins in the Southern swing states of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, as well being ahead similarly in Arizona.  Biden is close in the other key swing states of Texas, Ohio, and Iowa, just behind President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence by even closer margins.  Ann Selzer, the “best pollster in politics,” had Trump a few days ago +7 in Iowa, and I think he will just manage to hang on in Ohio.  Because of the GOP propensity to effectively suppress votes in the South (i.e., cheat), I am not giving Biden any of those Southern states (North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, or Texas, but wow, Texas is purple now…).  However, I think there is a decent chance for Biden take Arizona (and there is an especially-strong, and high-performing, Democratic Senate candidate there in the form of Mark Kelly, former astronaut and husband to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who survived a terrorist shooting her in the head and became a famous advocate for stricter gun laws), so I will favor him slightly there.  Those weird congressional districts with separate Electoral College-awardings in Nebraska and Maine I am giving to Biden since he seemed to have decent leads there.  His decent lead in Pennsylvania and larger leads in Michigan and Wisconsin seem to make those pretty safe for Biden too (though Pennsylvania less so), so my official Map is Biden 291, Trump 247, with Biden retaking the Midwest states Clinton lost in 2016 that Obama had won 2012.

If I am wrong, it would probably be Arizona and I think that we could also most likely see Florida go to Biden with so many displaced Puerto Ricans from Hurricane Maria living there or that Trump might upset in Pennsylvania with Biden’s comments about fracking and energy policy hurting him there (as a sign of this, Pittsburgh’s Post-Gazette, which had endorsed Obama twice and has not endorsed a Republican since 1972, surprisingly endorsed Trump on economic grounds even though it called his “unpresidential manners and character” an “embarrassment”).  I also think there is a decent chance Ohio could go to Biden.  And a lot of the states mentioned and a few others could go either way, but I think if I am wrong, that is where I will most likely be wrong.

And yet, if the Republican-controlled courts, with the newly installed Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court, get to decide by stopping vote counts or tossing out ballots, the election could be stolen.  But even with a polling error within the margin of error like in 2016, Biden should win with my map, minus Arizona.  I would love to believe Republican cheating will not be effective, but I feel that would be going against history. And it is hard to account for postal sabotage on the part of the Trump Administration.  

Of course, none of this accounts for possible election interference, hacking, or cyberwarfare…

But that’s it.  That’s my prediction.  Biden wins.  The world is saved.

NOTE: This map and article accidentally earlier included South Dakota in Biden’s column

See Brian’s two pieces where he out-predicted all of the mainstream press in picking Biden to win the nomination before early March’s Super Tuesday: Democrats Look Disastrous, But Biden May Yet Save Them from Themselves Starting in South Carolina; & Why Putin Boost Bernie Sanders and The Best Guide to Super Tuesday (no, seriously): Biden’s Got This (and the Nomination)

Also see Brian’s eBook, A Song of Gas and Politics: How Ukraine Is at the Center of Trump-Russia, or, Ukrainegate: A “New” Phase in the Trump-Russia Saga Made from Recycled Materials, available for Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook (preview here), and be sure to check out Brian’s new podcast!

© 2020 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him

Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse September 8, 2017

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) September 8th, 2017; UPDATE: September 11th, 2017: Fortune favored Florida as Irma was not nearly as catastrophically destructive as it could have been, but it could just as easily have been otherwise, and next time, which may even be in a few weeks, fortune could just as easily abandon us.

AMMAN — We just saw Houston, America’s fourth largest city, become an underwater one, suffering extensive damage as Hurricane Harvey overwhelmed a region woefully unprepared for an event that had been warned about for years, even if it occurred with an unprecedented degree of historic, record-setting rainfall. Now, Florida, and, it seems, Miami, are in the path of another monster storm: Hurricane Irma, which may yet become the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Atlantic or on earth.

REUTERS/Richard Carson

Two or even more of America’s major cities may be underwater and severely damaged in the span of just a few weeks, and two catastrophic storms occurring within but a few weeks of each other will be responsible if that comes to pass; a third, newly formed hurricane, Jose, even may hit the U.S. after Irma, with a fourth hurricane now deluging the Mexican Gulf Coast and likely on course to bring more rain to Texas. For Houston, the damage is so extensive and severe and so difficult to recover from that there may never be a full recovery, just as New Orleans is not the same after Katrina, even over a decade later.

Is this the new normal, and, if so, what does that mean and what do we have to do?

*****

By new normal, I do not mean to suggest that these storms will be a weekly or monthly thing during hurricane season, as is the case this season. But I do mean to suggest that the U.S. could easily expect being hit by a catastrophic storm or two every year or every other year.

Catastrophic landscapes that were the realm of science fiction, in films like The Road and Interstellar, the original Planet of the Apes, even the Mad Max series and the Book of Eli, now seem to be a possible near-present reality. Often, these films showcase massive storms that are symptoms of planet-altering climate change amid a hopeless, depressing, desolate earth home to a dwindling and desperate human race.

Literature also contains more than a few references to catastrophic natural disasters, from Gilgamesh’s and Noah’s floods to Voltaire’s Candide’s reality-based Lisbon and the wave-swept Númenor of Tolkien. In real life, from tsunamis and floods to volcanoes and earthquakes, natural disasters and climate change have destroyed and weakened cities and civilizations alike, some of which never recovered; here in Amman, Jordan, I live not even a three-dozens miles’ drive from Jerash, a beautiful ancient Roman city that never recovered from a massive earthquake that devastated it in 749 C.E; it is haunting to walk through ancient city’s wide, colonnaded streets, once teeming with life and love, and shops and festivals, empty now except for tourists.

A once bustling city thoroughfare in Jerash- photo by author

Is this a fate that could befall cities like Houston and Miami?

In a word, yes, and, at this point, there is little we can do if that is what is to be.

Imagine Katrina, Harvey, and Irma-like storms striking the Gulf Coast every few years or worse: cities like Houston, Miami, and New Orleans devastated every few years by massive wind damage and flooding, a possibly permanent toxic mold problem—already difficult enough to deal with without recurring, frequent flooding—creating asthma epidemics and worse for anyone spending an extended amount of time there, insurance companies and local businesses overwhelmed, students unable to go through a normal school year or counting their blessings when they do, the sick and elderly not wanting to risk treatment or retirement there for fear of having to undergo a difficult evacuation. It would simply make no economic sense for locals to keep having to rebuild everything after massive frequent destruction; crops, oil refineries, fishing, tourism, all manner of industries would flop were hurricanes like Katrina, Harvey, and Irma to happen with any level of frequency within a decennial span. Insurance companies would be forced to up their rates on a population already struggling economically and now facing a daunting recovery effort, placing most of them outside of insurance protection (as is already the case). And how many times will the nation as a whole want to fund a recovery in the same region for the same disasters over and over again? 

In short, a large swath of the United States may become uninhabitable for all practical purposes within our lifetimes, its residents wholly unable to cope with the frequent fury of Mother Nature, and a society that will wisely decide it cannot fit the bill for what once termed “hundred-year events” that are now happening every few years. People will be forced to fend for themselves in inhospitable conditions or relocate unless somehow we create hurricane-proof, wind-proof, and flood-proof buildings (good luck with that).

Of course, maybe this won’t be the case. Unlike, say, global temperatures, for which we have data spanning the long-term, we only have a few decades of reliable records of hurricanes; we’re simply not sure of the full extent of the effects that the undeniable reality of man-induced climate change are having or will have on hurricanes, but there is a consensus that warmer temperatures and rising sea levels are going to increase the deadliness, destructiveness, and intensity of hurricanes. There is also consensus that we will see more storms of a higher intensity and fewer weaker storms, though there is not as strong a consensus that this will result in fewer overall storms, though that is still what research suggests. It is notable that the U.S. has never before been hit by two category 4 or 5 hurricanes in a single season, but that is about to be the case in a matter of days, with the most intense part of hurricane season just beginning and the possibility of a third or even more storms to come before season’s end.

I have personally experienced multiple hurricanes of various strengths, and would gladly go through five weaker ones than one monster storm, so I am not sure the fewer storms but more intense ones is a net gain in any true sense, and the research should not provide comfort to no one.

****

This year may very well be an exception, but it may not be, and it is quite possible that it is not; we will have to wait and see to know.

The Guardian

But we do not have to wait and see to prepare, to consider the worst that was once before unimaginable; over the past few years (and really for decades), we have been seeing the hottest years in recorded history, and we will be seeing more intense storms that will threaten not just the Gulf and southern U.S. Atlantic Coast, but also the mid-Atlantic and northeastern U.S. seaboard as ocean temperatures continue to rise and expand the zones in which the most intense hurricanes can maintain their intensity. We cannot stop these increases in the near future, but we can, with effort, try to limit greater damage further down the road, though, of course, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement makes that all the more difficult.

But in the immediate near-future, the Southeastern U.S. is faced with a reckoning: for years, they have competed successfully with other regions in the country by offering businesses lower regulations and taxes and offering residents lower taxes, seeing economic and population growth partly as a result, as well as growing political clout in the U.S. House of Representatives. As Garrison Keillor eloquently noted recently, Minnesotans know they have to expect tough blizzards every winter; they have tougher regulations and higher taxes to be able to deal with these massive storms every winter and don’t expect a federal government handout when the inevitable happens. If massive hurricanes are to be a regular part of life in the Republican-led Southeastern United States, as in the case after any catastrophic natural disaster, changes will have to be made, sacrifices endured; this should mean that the long honeymoon this region has had disdaining the concepts of federal assistance (all Republican U.S. senators from Texas—Ted Cruz and John Cornyn—and Florida—Marco Rubio—voted against Sandy aid for the Northeast, as did the vast majority of U.S. House Republicans, including nearly every Republican from Texas and Florida), federal involvement in state affairs, regulation, and taxes should end now. Among the seven states with no state income tax are Texas and Florida, and other Gulf Coast states are among those with the lowest state income tax rates in the country; it is something of a shameless ask to request so much federal financial aid from other states willing to tax their residents more, to ask to those states to redistribute their wealth towards states unwilling to take responsibility by taking on their fair share of the burden and that opt, instead, to maintain an economic and population-attraction edge over the very states from which they are requesting aid. Those in the Southeast may also want to rethink their status as the most populous regional hotbed of both of man-made climate change and being among the most against actually enacting policy to do something about it.

America should come together and support our fellow citizens in those areas being devastated this hurricane season, but then we should demand a hard, honest look at the governing culture of some of the areas hit and demand hard, honest changes that will make them better prepared to handle what likely to be more frequent monster storms in the near future.

Those are the first few steps: the next will involve far tougher decisions about how different regions can continue on if such catastrophic storms end up happening far more frequently than has ever been experienced in recorded history. 

But if we can’t get the Gulf Coast to increase regulations that can save lives and institute the same taxes most of the rest of the country has in order to give themselves more resources that will better prepare their people and localities for disaster preparedness and response, good luck having any of those more challenging conversations down the road as we witness what is perhaps the beginning of climate change making devastation the norm for an entire region of the country.

Daniel J. Martinez / US Air National Guard

© 2017 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

See author’s Amazon eBooks here!

See related article:

The Most Powerful Senator on Climate Change Is a Delusional Lunatic

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here!

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981). If you think your site or another would be a good place for this or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse August 31, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) August 31st, 2016

Barcroft Media; AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File

Among all the problems the Republican Party is causing today, there is a new blunder that truly stands in its own category…

The Zika virus.

Yes, we truly can blame the Republican Party for the fact that there is a growing Zika threat in America, at least for the degree to which it will be a threat.  It was entirely possibly to plan ahead and mitigate whatever damage Zika would have done, but the Republican Party failed on this front, and it is important to understand why because this illustrates the modern Republican Party’s philosophy on government and illustrates it well.  In fact, Republicans’ handling of Zika is a sad yet clear reminder of how unfit to govern the GOP was even before that asteroid that is Donald Trump hit it, and that it was not a serious political party when it came to policy for some time before The Donald’s rise.

To truly understand the magnitude of the error here, we must start at the beginning.

From Uganda to Florida: The Strange, Surprising Odyssey of Zika 

The Zika virus was discovered in 1947 in the Zika forest of Uganda, a disease related to West Nile virus, dengue, and yellow fever.  The first case in humans was not detected until 1952, but it was not linked to illness in people until 1964, when a scientist studying the virus came down with a rash.  From its discovery until 2007, no outbreaks of Zika were detected by public health officials, only 14 confirmed cases in humans were detected, and the virus was thought to only to be “rare” and exhibit “mild symptoms,” even as mosquitoes carrying Zika were found in new parts of Africa and also Asia. However, the WHO considers the possibility that Zika’s similarities to dengue and chikungunya may have contributed to its lack of diagnosis. 

In 2007, though, Zika burst is way into medical headlines with an outbreak on the island of Yap, part of the Caroline Islands of the Federated States of Micronesia.  The small island nation—whose population was less than 7,400 as of its 2000 census—ended up with 185 suspected cases of Zika virus (49 confirmed, 59 probable), a figure arrived at from just completing surveys of 173 out of the island’s 1,276 households; from this information, researchers were able to estimate that 73% of the entire Island’s population 3 years of age or older were infected with Zika, with 919 of those falling ill, or 18% of the infected; none of those who became ill experienced serious symptoms or conditions.  Most common among the reported symptoms were rashes and fevers, followed by joint pain/inflammation and conjunctivitis.  Researchers were unable to determine a clear path as to how Zika emerged in this remote Pacific island.

The following year, a researcher in Senegal contracted the virus there, came back to the U.S., and sexually transmitted the virus to his wife; it could be the first example of a generally insect-transmitted disease being passed on through sexual intercourse (something which we now know is a feature of Zika).

Zika roared back into the headlines again in 2013 with a series outbreaks in the Pacific in 2013-2014.  The most serious outbreak occurred in French Polynesia, where as many as two-thirds of its 270,000 residents were estimated to have been infected (with 8,750 specific cases suspected, 341 actually confirmed).  Over 31,000 people sought treatment, and this outbreak came with a series of far more severe symptoms and conditions than previous outbreaks, including immune system problems.  Especially alarming were 8 confirmed cases of microcephaly: pregnant women developing fetuses with abnormally small heads, leading to a whole range of possible issues with mental development (5 of the fetuses were aborted, 3 were birthed), and researchers estimated that 1% of women infected with Zika who were pregnant and in their first trimester would be at risk of developing fetuses with microcephaly; this may seem low, but it is actually relatively high (all this information came from a retroactive study that only came out in mid-March 2016, a response to the WHO’s calling the suspected links between Zika and neurological disorders a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on February 1st, 2016; now, it also seems Zika can lead to other problems for babies’ brains, including hearing loss).

The Zika virus in French Polynesia also seemed to lead to dramatically higher incidents of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a condition in which the immune system attacks the nervous system and can lead to paralysis and even death, a conclusion supported by a study released late February in 2016, also in response to the WHO. 

The origin of the French Polynesia outbreak remains unknown, but it seems to have been the one to spread Zika to other places in the Pacific, including Chile’s Easter Island, and Zika probably even spread to other Pacific locales without their populations’ or medical experts’ awareness.

Thus, a disease that had been known for well over half-a-century in parts of Africa and Asia that had never been associated with any serious illness all of a sudden capable of leading to paralysis, severe birth defects, even death.

Fast forward to early March, 2015, when Brazil informs the WHO that a strange new disease is spreading; from February through April, about 7,000 people report infection, but most of them only experience mild symptoms, mainly a rash.  From 425 blood samples, tests are conducted to determine what the infection is, with a number of diseases not being confirmed present in any of the tests and only dengue coming up, present in just 13% of the samples.

Going back, only a few weeks after Brazil’s 2014 World Cup, much smaller numbers of patients had been coming in with rashes, fevers, joint pain, and other mild symptoms. 

The disease kept spreading throughout the end of 2015 and beginning of 2016, but kept eluding diagnosis.

Then in May, Brazil was finally able to confirm that the mystery illness was caused by the Zika virus, transmitted by local mosquitoes.  In response, the WHO declared a Zika alert.  But local Brazilian officials seemed relieved it was Zika; the available studies on it at the time suggested that it was only a mild disease, not as bad as other regularly occurring diseases in Brazil, with studies confirming links to more serious complications during the French Polynesia outbreak not coming out until later, in 2016.  It seems that the virus was brought to Brazil in a way where it became established locally by either the 2014 World Cup or an international boat race that occurred a few weeks later.

But the virus can also spread easily from travelers spreading the disease on their own, without mosquitoes; New York City’s first case predated Brazil’s outbreak, and was detected in December 2013 in a man who had just traveled extensively in Latin-America and the Asia-Pacific region.

The relief in Brazil at the diagnosis of Zika quickly disappeared just weeks later when cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome shot up sharply, the sense of dread only worsening when microcephaly also later began showing up in abnormally large numbers.  As of August 17th, Brazil has had 1,845 reported cases of microcephaly and/or other infant neurological complications from, or likely from, Zika infections, with 2,957 cases still being investigated.  And not only has Zika spread all over Central and South America and the Caribbean, but locally-transmitted Zika cases have just begun happening in the continental United States, in the Miami, Florida area.  It is expected to spread locally (i.e., through local mosquito populations) elsewhere in the U.S., especially the mosquito-rich American southeast and Gulf Coast; Texas, for example, has already had 108 travel-related cases but not locally-transmitted ones so far, but the state’s response to a potential outbreak has been lacking; in some cases, prescriptions from doctors are even required for the appropriate mosquito repellent.

But what makes this situation far worse is that most people won’t be showing any symptoms even after they have been infected with the virus (but can still transmit the disease through sexual contact!), meaning many travelers, including those returning from the just-concluded Rio Olympics, will be carrying the disease with them around the world without knowing it, including in the U.S.  Furthermore, as in Brazil, it will be many months before babies will be born with or fetuses clearly exhibit microcephaly. 

There have been confirmed cases of travel-related Zika in every U.S. state, though so far, only Florida has developed locally transmitted (mosquito) cases.  But for Zika to be established locally, it wouldn’t take much: there are two types of mosquitoes known to be able to transmit Zika in the U.S., and they live in most of the East Coast, most of the Midwest, the Southeast, and much of the Southwest; global warming has helped expand the reach of these mosquitoes, and they would just need to bite someone infected with Zika from abroad to spread it to other people.  Additionally, a very small percentage of the time (a bit more than one-third of 1%) at least one of the two mosquito species’ mothers pass Zika to their eggs (which are “impervious” to pesticide) and therefore pass it on to new generations of mosquitoes, making containment even more difficult; it may seem like a small percentage, but when you think about how many mosquitoes there are in any given area, it is enough to make an impact.

Zika & Congressional Republicans in 2016: A Timeline & Microcosm of GOP’s Reckless Irresponsibility & Inability to Govern

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images: CDC Director discusses poor response to Zika

Yet the U.S. should hardly be caught flat-footed at this moment in time, even if that seems to be exactly what is happening: back in January of this year, about half a year before the first local/mosquito U.S. transmissions in Florida at the end of July, both the WHO (January 25th) and CDC warned (January 28th) that Zika, already “explosively” spreading in South America, was “likely” to spread to the U.S., and they were hardly alone in sounding the alarm that the U.S. was at risk.  And on February 1st, the WHO labeled Zika’s suspected links with neurological disorders a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.

Thankfully, after a February 5th request from Senate Democrats that President Obama forcefully address the threat of Zika, Obama acted swiftly, barely more than a week after the CDC warning, requesting nearly $2 billion in funds to help prevent and fight off a U.S. Zika outbreak (February 8th).  The funding would have included boosts to mosquito control programs, vaccine research, and educational efforts.

But not even two weeks later, leading Republicans in the House of Representatives rejected the president’s request (February 18th).  Enter politics: those leading House Republicans felt that existing money set aside for the State Department and for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to deal with an earlier Ebola scare should have been allocated to deal with Zika, and rejected the call for new funding.  The White House maintained that it would not support sabotaging efforts to keep Americans and others safe from Ebola, one of the world’s worst infectious diseases.  Even a compromise measure that would have seen about $1 billion in emergency Zika funding approved fell by the wayside because of the politics of Republican objections to the Iran nuclear deal and Republican infighting. Many (and important) Republicans in the Senate followed their House colleagues in questioning and resisting Obama’s request.

Eventually, in the face of Republican intransigence, the White House reluctantly felt compelled to use $589 million already set aside for other emergency preparedness programs (April 6th): $510 million from ongoing Ebola programs (including those run by USAID in Africa) and $79 million from other programs, including ones that strategically stockpiles vaccines and other supplies in case of serious outbreaks, a move that has various local jurisdictions worried about their abilities to meet other threats now.  The gutting of the Ebola programs could see their funding run out in October, which is when the funding Obama redirected to deal with Zika could also run out.

Republicans seemed awfully ready to dismiss such concerns of national and international public health, though the White House stressed that new funding was still then necessary.  In contrast, many Republicans at first wanted to avoid appropriating any new emergency funds and wanted the White House to appropriate (and later, keep appropriating) money from other emergency funds until a new discussion about new non-emergency standard funding can come about when decisions are made about how to fund the government for FY2017, which should begin being funded around October 1st, provided there is not a repeat of brinksmanship about a shutdown.

In essence, the Republicans were procedurally trying to treat Zika as if it were anything but an emergency in order to save money, oppose president Obama, and score political points on various fronts: some wanted to demand cuts in other areas in return, others did not want to see any spending bill passed whatsoever in a heated election year; things are particularly difficult in the House, where every Republican and Democrat is up for reelection this fall, and in which getting agreement just among GOP members is notoriously difficult (just ask former Speaker John Boehner or current Speaker Paul Ryan).

Even as Republicans in Congress delayed and obstructed, the WHO announced “a strong scientific consensus” that Zika was the cause of the more severe conditions it had been suspected of causing (March 31st), and CDC officials confirmed the suspicion that Zika was definitely a causeof birth defects, namely severe microcephaly (April 13th): “Never before in history has there been a situation where a bite from a mosquito can result in a devastating malformation,” noted the CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden.

In the second half of May, House Republicans finally passed a $622 million Zika bill (May 18th), far less than Obama had asked far (about one-third, to be more precise).  It was a bill that was only intended to provide funding for not even half a year and that took even more funding—over $352 million—away from Ebola programs and also took $270 million from HHS administrative funds.  For the Director of the CDC (who quipped: “It’s just not enough”) and other experts, such funding falls far short of what is necessary, limits and impairs effective responses, and is risky in that it jeopardizes preparedness for other emergencies. 

The White House threatened to veto the legislation; however, relative to the position of some Republicans that the funding for Zika could wait until the next fiscal year, this move, sadly, marked a sort of “progress.”  But Obama said he would veto the measure as grossly insufficient, a view shared even by Obama opponent and Sen. (and former presidential candidate) Marco Rubio, Florida’s lone Republican in the Senate (it probably helps that Florida is particularly vulnerable to Zika).

The Senate itself passed (May 19th) a measure that allocated $1.1 billion in new funding for Zika, nearly twice as much what the House approved; though it received much support from Senate Democrats, it was part of a huge spending bill, one that also faces a White House veto, but for reasons unrelated to Zika: included were provisions limiting the power of the Department of Housing and Urban Development and barring the president from closing the Guantánamo Bay military prison facility or from authorizing new facilities to house the prisoners now held there anywhere back in the U.S.Such is the way standard and ongoing political fights between the White House and Republicans come to affect pressing action on emergencies like the Zika virus.

Such is the way standard and ongoing political fights between the White House and Republicans come to affect pressing action on emergencies like the Zika virus.

Efforts to reconcile the House and Senate legislation ran into further political speed bumps in the weeks after their passings: Republicans in the House thought removing environmental protections against some pesticides was an appropriate measure to pass (May 24th), which earned a response from the White House which excoriated the move: “Rebranding legislation that removes important Clean Water Act protections for public health and water quality is not an appropriate avenue for addressing the serious threat to the nation that the Zika virus poses,” noting that exceptions already exist for emergencies like this one and that this is part of a larger, preexisting GOP agenda to loosen environmental restrictions on pesticides.  Republicans are also fighting against any additional abortion or contraceptive methods being used in response to sexually-transmissible Zika, with some preferring abstinence-only educational approaches: the Zika bill passed by the House did not even provide money for facilities that might use contraceptive methods to help fight the sexual spread of Zika. 

Things would only get worse: during the reconciliation process to merge the House and Senate bills into something final, amid the height of partisan rancor over gun control after this summer’s Orlando terrorist mass shooting at a gay nightclub and during a Democratic sit-in on that very issue of gun-control, Republicans saw to it that a provision was removed (June 23rd, around 3AM) that would have banned and prevented federal funding for official large flyings of “Confederate” rebel flags in federal cemeteries, itself a product of a contentious fight over the rebel Civil War flag that took place after the terrorist shooting of African-Americans in Charleston last summer.  Additionally, the final bill: cut $540 million in funding for Obamacare/ACA, did not provide any funding for contraceptive prevention providers (including, of course, any funds for Planned Parenthood) for this STD, and took an additional $107 million away from Ebola programs and another $100 million from administrative funding for HHS, with $750 million in total cuts/reallocations offsetting the $1.1 billion in Zika funding, funding which would sustain efforts to fight the disease through September 2017.  Unsurprisingly, Senate Democrats blocked the bill in a procedural vote on June 28th, having felt that by agreeing to an amount that was $800 million less than what the Obama Administration wanted was compromise enough, and that the cheap political ploys, especially blocking the funding of preventive contraceptive measures for the rapidly spreading STD that is Zika—a move that especially leaves poor women vulnerable—went too far.

So, too, did the White House, which said it would veto the legislation over the controversial provisions.

In fact, Obama noted (July 1st) that had funding already been approved, it is likely that a functional Zika vaccine would already be close to on its way; the president noted the delay in funding and the efforts to score cheap, often unrelated, political points in trying to deal with this emergency have prevented this from being the case and this unacceptable situation poses a serious—and seriously avoidable and unnecessary—national health risk: “It’s been politics as usual rather than responding to a very serious health request,” he said.

Even as new Congressional testimony by experts offered dire warnings on Zika (July 13th), the very next day (July 14th), Congress adjourned for its nearly two-month summer recess after failing again to bridge the divide: Republicans still decided it was better to use the vital, pressing funding for fighting Zika as a poker chip in a card game involving Obamacare, government spending, birth control, pesticides, even the “Confederate” flag rather than treat it as its own issue and its own end; after Republicans rejected an attempt by the Democrats to go back to the bipartisan $1.1 billion clean bill they had passed May 19th without the controversial political gimmicks—with GOP Senate leaders saying they had to accept the House bill as is because of procedure (a procedure the Senate Republican leadership had pursued without including Democrats in the process)—Democrats again blocked the new $1.1 billion measure with the controversial, sometimes counterproductive measures.  Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who would be announced as Hillary Clinton’s VP pick over a week later, was at the hearing the day before and expressed what many are feeling: “This is why people hate Congress…This is why people hate Washington.”  At the same hearing, CDC Director Frieden somberly added that “This is no way to fight epidemics.”

Thus, Congress went on vacation during the peak of the threat of Zika spreading in the U.S. and over five months after Obama first asked for funding to fight Zika without providing funding to fight Zika.  The fight over Zika will resume again once Congress is back in session, in the fall, nearly seven months after the president first laid out his request.

And it was only a few weeks after Congress went on recess when news broke on July 29ththat Zika had been spread through local/mosquito transmission in Florida, the first/local mosquito transmissions in the continental U.S; the virus continues to spread in the state.

In response to the local transmissions in Florida, congressional Democrats urged Republican congressional leaders to call Congress back to session in order to pass a Zika bill (July 31st).  They repeated this call on August 4th.  Republican leaders, however, choose not to reconvene Congress.

On August 9th, the first Zika-related death of an infant in the U.S., one born with microcephaly in Texas, is announced.

On August 11th, Sec. Sylvia Mathews Burwell, the head of HHS, announced that her department’s money to fight ZIka—taken earlier by the Obama Administration from money set aside for the important Ebola and other emergency programs—would run out by the end of August.  In order to prevent a stoppage of the work to develop a critically important Zika vaccine, which had just begun clinical trials on people, she announced that she was taking $81 million away from other noteworthy programs: $34 million from programs at the National Institutes of Health for researching treatment of cancer, diabetes, and other diseases; $19 million from a program that provides heating oil for low-income families; $4 million to help substance abuse, among others.  On this day also, Democrats again call for Republican leaders in Congress to end the recess to pass a Zika bill.  This still has not happened.

On August 12th, the U.S. declares a public health emergency in Puerto Rico, where at that time well over 10,000 confirmed cases of Zika had occurred, nearly 10% of those with pregnant women.

On August 30th, the CDC noted that it would have no more funds to send to states if new outbreaks occurred.

And, oh, there could be another self-inflicted government shutdown this fall, further complicating health agencies’ abilities to combat Zika as chaos would envelop the funding and budgeting process.

Republicans Chose Politics Over Protecting Americans

Obama has for months repeatedly pleaded with Congressional Republicans to put politics aside in dealing with a potential Zika epidemic, but his efforts to publicly pressure Republicans, as is often the case, thus far have very little to show for them.  He is exercising his constitutional duty to protect the American people, but Congress is failing to do its constitutional to pass laws to do the same.

Let’s be clear about how absolutely miserably the Republican congressional delegation is failing to do its basic duties, is failing the American people: given the following choice, Republicans chose all the wrong ones:

• xA.) Respond by fully funding Obama’s request to protect Americans from Zika without taking money from other important emergency response programs
• ✓B.) Nickel-and-dime the president on this request and argue over funding levels for a pressing medical emergency when the funding request is relatively very small compared to general congressional spending levels
• ✓C.) Fund Obama’s request by taking money out of the ongoing emergency response to the deadly, horrific Ebola virus
• ✓D.) Pass a Zika bill that does not allow for federal support of contraception programs in trying to fight a virus that is sexually transmitted
• ✓E.) Use Obama’s request to continue the irrational, misleading fight over Planned Parenthood and contraception in general
• ✓F.) Use Obama’s request as a political excuse to defund Obamacare
• ✓G.) Use Obama’s request as a political excuse to loosen general long-term regulations on pesticides that can harm the American people even though exceptions for dealing with emergencies like Zika already exist
• ✓H.) Use Obama’s request as a political excuse to fight for federally funded public displays of the “Confederate” rebel flag, inarguably a symbol of white supremacy
• ✓I.) Blame Obama for not funding a Zika response because he doesn’t give in to outrageous political brinksmanship, à la the shutdown fights
• ✓J.) Keep refusing to fund the emergency response on terms acceptable (or sensible) to the Obama Administration and Democrats in order to force Obama to take money away from programs Republicans don’t like
• ✓K.) Don’t give Obama what he wants because it’s Obama asking for something and giving it to him is a “win” for Obama and Democrats during an election year, or during anything

Without question, Republicans very much did not choose A.), definitely chose B.) through I.), and arguably but quite likely chose J.) and K.). 

And all this regarding a public health emergency that could threaten thousands of American babies with lifelong mental defects and others with other conditions.  And Democrats are 100% right to oppose B.) through H.): to legitimize such political malpractice and allow such tawdry, cheap games to be played with a public health emergency is not a precedent that should be legitimized or tolerated in any way, at any time.  Zika is a serious public health emergency that deserves to be treated as an end in and of itself, not to be used as a political football to be kicked around in the process of arguing over unrelated issues. With the fight over Medicaid expansion and the 9/11 first-responders bill, we already saw that the GOP was more than willing to play politics with the health and lives of Americans, and now we have yet another example of such behavior.

The True Republican Party: Disgraceful Long Before Trump & Not to Be Trusted Either with Power or to Keep Americans Safe

Getty: GOP Leaders Speaker Paul Ryan & Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

Ladies and gentlemen, this choice calculus is today’s Republican Party.  And the thing is, none of this has to do with Trump: this is the Republican Party’s style, its governing ethos, its modus operandi, its political philosophy.  And this is nothing new: this is how this disgrace of a political party has operated for much of Obama’s time in the White House, for years now.  The stupidity, recklessness, and political gamesmanship with which the Republican Party approaches matters of life and death, of public health, of emergency concern are not in dispute and are made quite clear with the GOP’s behavior regarding the Zika emergency response.  In fact, the Republicans’ actions on Zika are a perfect microcosm of what the Republican Party is and is not: it is a farce and, as I noted last fall, is not a serious party deserving of our respect, let alone our vote. 

And, again, for all those who are trying to pin the failure of the Republican Party as a party on Trump, as if somehow the GOP is ok and respectable as long as Trump is removed from the picture, the Zika crisis makes it clear Trump is just one symptom of the disease that is the Republican Party itself.

Without a doubt, then, the Zika example is clear proof that the Republican Party is a disgrace and is not fit for or even capable of governing, with or without Trump.  It seems that Trump will lose (though who really knows?!), but Americans need to remember what the real Republican Party is, and not let it get away with deflecting blame away from the party itself onto Trump.  Who knows how many cases of Zika, present and future, could have been prevented—how many fewer babies with lifelong damage to their brains there would be, how many fewer mothers would be literally worried sick, how many deaths could have been prevented—if Republicans responded quickly and sensibly in February to Obama’s Zika request.

That request was made February 8th.  Tomorrow is September 1st.  How much longer will this continue?  How much longer will voters tolerate it? As far back as January, experts have been warning that the Gulf Coast, with its hot and humid climate, large mosquito populations, and large segments of populations living in poverty, was very vulnerable to Zika.  Many of these locations are in Republican congressional districts; will voters hold their representatives accountable this fall, as Zika spreads and most of these Republicans fail(ed) to protect their people from a fast-spreading disease that can cause serious complications, especially to the unborn?  Shame on the Republican Party.  But for people, especially in Zika-vulnerable places, who voted and vote for congressmen that played, play, and will play politics with Zika?  Shame on you, too.  And shame on America for having this be our response to such a major public health crisis.

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Feel free to share and repost this article on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981), and here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content, or would like to have Brian generate content for you, your site, or your organization, please do not hesitate to reach out to him!

 Originally published on LinkedIn Pulse July 3, 2016  

By Brian E. Frydenborg (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter @bfry1981) July 3rd, 2016, also published by StupidParty Math v Myth here

All photos taken from the Clinton Foundation website

AMMAN — If you listen to many conservatives, the Clinton Foundation is little more than a personal, criminal stash for cash for the Clintons (one big “scam,” to quote Trump).  But like so many other things that conservatives claim, upon closer inspection, efforts to tarnish or call into question the Clinton Foundation fall flat, quite like their efforts to dismiss the good work of the United Nations, even for all the UN’s faults.  In reality, the Clinton Foundation is a massive organization, atypical of most charities but one that does a staggering amount of good all around the world.

Love or hate the Clintons’s politics, it is an objective and indisputable fact that Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, and Chelsea Clinton have been involved in programs that have bettered and save the lives of millions of people.  Even without Bill’s political career, his work with the Clinton Foundation would be enough to make him one of the great philanthropists of our time, and Hillary Clinton has also been getting increasingly involved, as has Chelsea.

What the Clinton Foundation Is and How It Works

The Clinton Foundation is actually a public charity that mainly does direct charity work, which can be confusing since many foundations primarily funnel money to other charities.  While conservative media and political figures (like serial liar Carly Fiorina) have claimed that only a small portion (Fiorina said 6%, hot-air-dispenser Rush Limbaugh said 15%) of the money going into the Foundation goes to charity, this statistic is in reference to the money that the Foundation gives to other charitable groups; the vast majority its money still goes to charity, its own charitable works, with 87.2% of all funds going directly to either their or others’ program activities/beneficiaries.  Unsurprisingly, conservatives myopically failed to do even this basic level of research before making their wildly off-base claims, which is par for the course in these hyperpartisan times. 

What is now the Clinton Foundation began in 1997 as an organization that began helping then-President Clinton set up his presidential library, but since then it has grown to be a global foundation that encompasses eleven initiatives, has raised over $2 billion for charity and development work, and now raises about a quarter of a billion annually.

Let’s look at these eleven parts, and a twelfth that was recently ended:

Clinton Foundation:

2014 expenses: $249,545,030 (12.3% overhead, including management, administrative, and fundraising expenses; 87.2% directly to program activity/beneficiaries; and 0.5% to make up for shortfalls in donation pledges)

Clinton’s Presidential Center (library) (1997-present)

2014 expenses: $13,501,618 (5.4% of Foundation total)

Presidential libraries serve as something of a combination of a museum and an archive for the particular presidency they showcase.  The Clinton Foundation was formed in 1997 to help raise money for Bill Clinton’s presidential library, which it did to the tune of $165 million over some years plus over $11 million in the form of grant of land from Little Rock, Arkansas, on which the library was built (in comparison, Reagan’s library cost $60 million at the time it was built, and George W. Bush’s presidential library cost about $250 million).  Clinton’s library, which includes the University of Arkansas’ Clinton School of Public Service and provides year-round educational programs and camps for students of all ages, has benefited the city of Little Rock greatly, as well.

Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative (2002-2013)

The Clinton Economic Opportunity Initiative began in 2002 by helping small businesses in Harlem and grew to focus on promoting entrepreneurs and small businesses in cities across America.  Through partnerships with successful entrepreneurs who acted as mentors and major business institutions like Booz Allen Hamilton and UBS, the Initiative specialized in providing consulting and mentoring to small businesses and small business owners.  The 2012 annual report for the Clinton Foundation noted that the Clinton Economic Initiative had provided 75,000 hours of pro bono consulting and mentoring hours, over $15 million in pro bono consulting, that 92% of businesses that received assistance from its Entrepreneur Mentoring Program said that that assistance had helped them deal with the recession, that all these the businesses assisted had an average of a 16% increase in workforce, and over 600 volunteers provided long-term pro bono services for small businesses in nine different U.S. cities.  Another example of the type of work the Initiative engaged in, as highlighted in the 2009 annual report, was helping to provide banking services to struggling populations in America that were underserved by the banking industry. The program was shuttered in 2013 because the Foundation found that the efforts were too labor intensive and dependent on many too outside factors to be replicated on the larger scale the Foundation had hoped for it.

Clinton Health Access Initiative* (2002-present, *now affiliated but separate entity)

2014 expenses: $143,041,357 (57.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Health Access Initiative began in 2002 as a big push to provide HIV/AIDS patients with low-cost access to life-saving drugs, and since then has expanded to include treatment for malaria and vaccine access, among other programs; nearly 10 million people have received access to lifesaving treatment at low cost through the Initiative since 2002, to name its most significant achievement.  It now operates directly in more than 33 countries benefiting over 70 countries overall.  Its 2014 annual report noted that it was also heavily involved in assisting Liberia with its recent Ebola epidemic.

Clinton Alliance for a Healthier Generation (2005-present, *now affiliated but separate entity)

2014 expenses: $16,436,262 ($2 million from Clinton Foundation, 0.8% of Foundation’s total expenses; rest is (presumably) raised by Alliance on its own, outside of the efforts of the Foundation)

The Alliance for a Healthier generation was founded by the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association in 2005 to fight America’s childhood obesity epidemic by providing alternatives to soft-drink sodas in schools and other facilities used by children, all through making deals with the soda industry.  It is the nation’s largest effort to fight childhood obesity, and in large part because of the Alliance’s efforts, the calories of drink products sent to school locations fell 90% from 2004-2010.  Through 2015, the program has spread to help affect 18 million students in over 31,000 schools in all 50 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico, as well as over 6,300 locations used by children outside of school grounds.  There is also an effort to help students improve health in other ways, engaging over 56,000 doctors and health professionals.  The Alliance also engages companies like McDonald’s to improve the level of healthier offerings within their product lines, in McDonald’s case covering 85% of its worldwide sales.

Clinton Global Initiative (2005-present)

2014 expenses: $23,544,381 (9.4% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Global Initiative began as way for President Clinton to bring together world leaders and thinkers as only he can together in one place and to get them to make substantive commitments towards tackling major global problems.  Through 2015, it has engaged over “180 heads of state, 20 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, heads of foundations and NGOs, major philanthropists, and members of the media, which has resulted in $90 billion in commitments representing over 3,100 Commitments to Action, which have improved the lives of over 430 million people in more than 180 countries,” spanning issues as diverse as job creation, training, education, human rights, gender equality, health, medicine, conservation, ecology, endangered species, and international development, among others. 

Clinton Climate Initiative (2006-present)

2014 expenses: $8,293,416 (3.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Climate Initiative has been working for years to address fundamental drivers behind dangerous man-made climate change using easily replicable and cost-effective methods that the Initiative is spreading throughout the U.S. and the world.  The Initiative’s Forestry Program is helping governments together with other partners to better manage their forests and forested lands and to help plan and enact forest restoration, with major programs in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. The Islands Diesel Replacement program helps small island countries transform their energy sectors into ones that involve far more clean energy and far more sustainable practices, and also assists with waste and water management, which all, in turn, spur new jobs and markets for the green energy sector.  An energy-consumption-reduction program and a Home Energy Affordability Loan (HEAL) program that both began in Arkansas have both spread to six other states—California, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin—and allowed both employers and employees to greatly improve energy efficiency and reduce costs, with the HEAL program alone helping over 5,600 people and both programs together reducing U.S. carbon emissions by over 33,500 tons every year.

Clinton Development Initiative (2006-present)

2014 expenses: $4,482,714 (3.3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Development Initiative has been helping small farmers in Tanzania, Malawi, and Rwanda by leveraging knowledge, resources, and partnerships to help over 105,000 small farmers improve their efficiency and access to markets.  In addition, its Trees of Hope program in Malawi has helped over 2,300 farmers plant more than 2.6 million trees to help offset their carbon footprint and create a new opportunity in tree farming, where it is also helping local farmers and their families by establishing local health clinics.  In Rwanda, the Initiative recently helped to create two local businesses based on producing soy in one case and coffee in the other that are combined expected to create hundreds of jobs and help 150,000 farmers with their livelihoods.  With a New Seeds to Sale Project in Myanmar, the Initiative also helps to reach some 15,000 farmers there over the first 3 years of implementation.

Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (2007-present)

2014 expenses: $7,358,967 (3% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership seeks to implement the best of non-profit and for-profit approaches to help emerging-market-nations around the world deal with major gaps in either supply chains or distribution chains in ways that improve both the social and financial situations of poorer, underserved populations by bringing them into one of three-market driven approaches: supply chain enterprises, distribution enterprises, or training center enterprises in the hopes of providing economic opportunities through which people can find social mobility and lift themselves out of poverty.  Distribution enterprises can make a huge difference in rural areas where many small villages and towns and farmers often find it very difficult to obtain basic supplies.  The Partnership in one instance found almost 3,000 women in one of the most remote parts of Peru and trained and equipped them with the help of major corporations to be able to sell many basic, in-demand products to their own communities; these women are expected to double their income within a year of beginning the program.  Supply chain enterprises help small farmers in developing countries obtain ways to get their products to the right markets and improve their business as a result as well as help developing markets fill their shelves with appropriate and better quality products.  A Partnership enterprise in one region of India was able to help small farmers get cashew products to new customers, and another Partnership program set up many small farmers with PepsiCo’s local juice operations; along with efforts to help local farmers become more efficient and produce better crops, the Partnership hopes to see these farmers’ incomes double within 5 years and to spread these models to encompass some 15,000 local farmers in the region in the near future.  Another project is helping over 12,000 peanut farmers in Haiti get their crop to markets.  Finally, training center enterprises help to provide youth in developing countries the skills needed to get decent jobs in places where there is often a skills mismatch.  One such enterprise in Cartagena, Colombia, is training some 20,000 young people to be able to find jobs in the hospitality industry.  The Partnership will be expanding to new regions and countries soon, and thus far has helped to train and empower more than 450,000 people in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia.

Clinton Health Matters Initiative (2012-present)

2014 expenses: $3,696,323 (1.5% of Foundation total)

The Clinton Health Matters Initiative works in the United States through a wide variety of public and private, local and national entities to reduce the occurrence of preventable health problems, conditions and diseases, while also working to bridge inequality in health and healthcare access and to improve access for all Americans.  Its national-level programs focus on “employee health, military and veteran health, health disparities, access to nutrition, access to sport and physical activity, and prescription drug abuse,” while a variety of local and regional programs (mainly focusing on working through many hundreds of partners to help some 8 million people in specific regions in the U.S.: California’s Coachella Valley, Central Arkansas, Northeast Florida, the Greater Houston Area, and, most recently, Adams County, Mississippi) combine with the national programs to be projected to be able to benefit some 85 million Americans.  The initiative has also created over $200 million in partnerships with various organizations to help improve Americans’ health, is helping to innovate new technology to improve healthcare across the country and access to information about health and healthcare, is improving substance abuse and mental health programs on over 60 college campuses, is pioneering fitness programs, is working with 40 different organizations to improve employee wellness, and is bringing together experts from many different organizations to plan new ways to tackle health problems in America.

The following programs fall under the “other” category as listed in the Foundations’ financial statements/annual reports, as is (presumably) the $2 million grant that goes to the Clinton Alliance for a Healthier Generation; the “other” category comprised $13,789,165, or 5.5% of the Foundation’s 2014 expenses; minus the Alliance grant, these below programs would be part of $11,789,165, or 4.7% of the Foundation’s 2014 expenses.

Clinton Foundation in Haiti (2009-present)

The Clinton Foundation in Haiti began in 2009 as a way to specifically help the beleaguered Caribbean nation, but when a major earthquake devastated the nation in 2010, the program focused for some time on disaster relief, recovery, and rebuilding but is now back to its original intent: helping to empower the people of Haiti through education and economic opportunity by engaging a wide range of actors.  Since its inception, the program has raised some $36 million for Haiti (including $16.4 million in for immediate relief after the earthquake tragedy), and has also been instrumental in bringing about $120 million in direct investment to Haiti, including in Haiti’s agricultural, artisan, and environmental sectors, helping some 117,000 Haitians and creating some 11,200 jobs.

No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project (2013-present)

The No Ceilings: Full Participation Project, led by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton, aims to bring women and girls around the world to points of full participation and equal opportunity in their societies using data-driven methods.  To this end, the Project partnered with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to produce a detailed global report on the status of women and girls worldwide, identifying specific areas of concern that can be targeted by various organizations around the world.  As part of this process, the Project began a global conversation about the status of women involving over 12,000 people, and conducted a survey about the status of women of over 10,000 people in over 150 countries.  The Project also teamed with The Brookings Institution to secure pledges from over 30 partners to provide $600 million to help girls get access to and do well in secondary school, which has since been increased to $800 million through 50 partners with plans to reach 15 million girls.  Another initiative plans to facilitate access to mobile technology for women in Afghanistan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Arab Gulf States in order to help empower disempowered women in those locations.

Too Small to Fail (2013-present)

The Too Small to Fail project, also led by Hillary Clinton, seeks to help different parts of society to come together to provide solid heath and growth environments for children from when they are born to age 5, focusing in particular on interactions involving talking, reading, and singing.  Such interactions foster vital early brain and language development among our youngest children, ensuring that they enter school not in a mental state behind that of their follow classmates and in a better position to succeed in life.  This helps to fight the “word gap” in which lower-income kids by age 4 hear an average of 30 million fewer words than their better-situated counterparts, causing their brains and language skills to develop more slowly.  With partners like Sesame Street, the American Academy of Pediatrics, Univision, Text4baby, and Scholastic, Too Small to Fail was a major force in efforts to donate some 500,000 books, reach 700,000 parents regularly with parenting information and tips through text messaging, use television programming to get important information and tips out to parents, get over 20,000 families to take pledges, and distribute 62,000 literacy toolkits to pediatric professionals.

*****

In addition:

In America, the Clinton Foundation has also helped to organize thousands of volunteers for “Days of Action” that have resulted in over 18,000 hours of volunteer service since 2012, at first in response to Hurricane Sandy and later to include other projects.  There is also the Job One initiative, designed to help young Americans find meaningful employment in the wake of the Great Recession; so far, the initiative has secured promises from 13 companies to focus on mentoring and hiring young people, has generated commitments worth $37 million, and expects to be able to help some 150,000 young Americans in the near future.

*****

All in all, The Clinton Foundation is a unique thing in the world, one of the world’s largest charities on its own, but then transcending even that status when the extensive action it has led indirectly through its special partnerships and relationships is taken into account, amplifying its already staggering scale of impact on people all over the world.  It’s time the media and even the Clintons’ critics clearly acknowledged this basic truth.  And for Trump to criticize the Clinton Foundation, when nothing he has done has even come close to a fraction of this level of charity, is shameful.

© 2016 Brian E. Frydenborg all rights reserved, permission required for republication, attributed quotations welcome

If you appreciate Brian’s unique content, you can support him and his work by donating here. 

Here are many more articles by Brian E. Frydenborg.  If you think your site or another would be a good place for this content please do not hesitate to reach out to him! Feel free to share and repost on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow him there at @bfry1981)

Originally published here thanks to Patrick M. Andedall

Why Senator James Inhofe would be hilarious except that he is real, he is serious, and he has a lot of power on climate issues.

By Brian E. Frydenborg, LinkedIn,Facebook, and Twitter (you can follow me there at @bfry1981) March 23rd, 2015

If a parody comedy movie were to be made about stupidity and ideological blindness of the cognitive dissonance variety in government, there are number of amusing paths the director and producers could choose to take. Perhaps they could concoct a secretary of defense or a four star general who is a pure pacifist. Or how about a surgeon general who is a Christian Scientist? A Supreme Court justice who is illiterate? A president who is a nihilist or an anarchist? Perhaps an attorney general who only has experience as a personal injury lawyer? A Creationist to run to Department of Education? Maybe an Amish person to run the Department of Energy? OR… what about a climate change denier to chair the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works? Oh boy, that would be hilarious… in a fictional movie…

Except that last one ain’t fiction. It’s reality.

And in that situation, as a major figure in the government most responsible for pollution and global warming issues, that person is not even remotely funny. He is dangerous, a disgrace, and pathetic, as is the system and nation that allows this to take place.

Ladies and gentleman, let me introduce you to Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma (Washington, DC, office: (202) 224-4721), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, all-around indicator of the farce that has become policymaking in the Republican Party and in Washington in general, and Christian warrior against science (just the latest in a long history of powerful Christian figures, beginning with St. Paul himself, who have been part of Christianity’s and religion’s longstanding war against science and philosophy.

To look at Inhofe’s record on climate change is to view a theater of the absurd.

Inhofe, it should first be acknowledged, gets more money for his campaigns and elections from the oil, gas, and energy industries than any other contributors, and they are the industries that stand to lose the most from any robust actions designed to combat global warming. He has even written a book attacking the whole concept of man-made climate change/global warming, titled: The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. And while he is a regular fountain of anti-climate-science-nonsense, some of his absurdities are so outlandish that they deserve to be quoted here; in one instance, Inhofe asserted that “Climate is changing, and climate has always changed…There’s archaeological evidence of that. There’s biblical evidence of that. There’s historic evidence of that…The hoax is that there are some people who are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful, they can change climate. Man can’t change climate.” Adding to this, another time he exclaimed that “The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He [God] is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.” He even cites the Bible as evidence against science: “I take my religion seriously…this what a lot of alarmists forget: God is still up there, and He promised to maintain the seasons and that cold and heat would never cease as long as the earth remains…one of my favorite Bible verses” is Genesis 8:22, which reads as follows: “As long as the earth remains/There will be springtime and harvest/Cold and heat, winter and summer.” And who are scientists to dispute Genesis?

Yes, Inhofe and his like-minded anachronisms (including 2016 presidential hopefuls Jeb Bush and Sen. Ted Cruz, as well as the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin) who dominate the Republican Partyfancy themselves brave skeptics, holding back the flooding tide of hysterical liberal climate scare activists. But to be skeptical is to demand hard evidence in the absence of such evidence, or to demand more such evidence when that evidence is limited, if you are presented with a claim about something. And this is most definitely not what Inhofe, the Republican party, and those challenging climate science are doing; rather, they are flat out denying heaps and mounds of the very evidence that would more than satisfy any skeptic or skepticism on the issue.

Let’s be clear about what we are talking about here. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence—and by overwhelming, I mean that only 24 out of 13,950 peer-reviewed studies from 1991-2012 and only 2 out of 10,855 in 2013 rejected man-made global warming/climate change as a reality. That’s right, just 26 out of 25,182 peer-reviewed scientific articles in roughly the last quarter-century have outright and clearly rejected the concept that human activity is the driving force behind incredibly rapid and dangerous climate change that could threaten the entire world order and way of life. That’s barely more than 0.1%, or 1 in 1,000. Geologist James Lawrence Powell, whose convincing and very sound methodology gave us these numbers, concludes that this information can tell us that “1. There [is sic] a mountain of scientific evidence in favor of anthropogenic global warming and no convincing evidence against it” and “2. Those who deny anthropogenic global warming have no alternative theory to explain the observed rise in atmospheric CO2 and global temperature.” In other words, there is no debate, just a consensus and a lunatic fringe. And “the inquisition” attacking the sound science behind the realities of man-made global warming/climate change are increasingly being debunked and/or linked to powerful corporate interests, like the oil/gas/energy industry, that face difficulty if world governments do what they need to do to limit greenhouse gas emissions and other activity contributing to these undeniable trends. One meta-study even concluded that, unless policies are changed soon, “ocean life faces mass extinction.” And just this past year of 2014 was the warmest year on record, and this current winter is the warmest winter on record.

This lunatic fringe would not be a problem, then, except that this lunatic fringe has hijacked the leadership of one of the two major parties in American politics to the degree that our legislative branch of government has one of these lunatics running its most powerful body that deals with climate change and global warming. These people appropriating the term skeptic is a disservice to that very term and shows them to be ignorant of its very meaning, and we must call them what they are: climate science deniers, because man-made climate change is undeniably real and undeniably a problem. Until the modern era, only the mass economic activity of ancient Rome was on a scale capable of altering climate, and the contributions to air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from that ancient time period are not in doubt. But from the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century onward, man-made pollution has once again happened on a massive scale and is today occurring on a much, much larger scale than in the Roman period, driving many destructive changes across the world’s climate in the past few decades.

Inhofe’s latest stunt attacking the science behind global warming was to highlight the fact that it was cold in Washington, DC; cold enough for him to bring a snowball from outside the Capitol and throw it on the floor of the U.S. Senate while he was addressing his fellow senators… The mind boggling thing is that he actually seems to think that a cold spell or snow in Washington in (GASP!) winter, of all times, is somehow sufficient proof that a general trend of global warming is not actually happening. See, Republicans like Inhofe seem to continually confuse the concepts of climate and weather, climate being the long-term pattern of weather. A quiet person may scream, yell, and fight once in a while, but on any given day there is a strong chance you will not find him or her engaging in such behavior. Republican approaches to climate science are the equivalent of someone pointing to this quiet person during an out-of-the-ordinary loud outburst and claiming that this is proof that the person is not quiet. Republicans are not even equipped, then, with a basic understanding of the terms or concepts essential to understanding these climate issues.

The bottom line is that Inhofe would be a farce and a joke if not for the fact that he arguably wields as much power as anyone else in the U.S. government when it comes to the environment and policy related to global warming and climate change. And he has made it clear he will wield this power in any way he can to can to defeat those who want to take action to combat global warming and climate change’s dangerous and catastrophic effects. And, when it comes to this “disturbing” fact, there is nothing funny, nothing to laugh about, at all.